hted the tallow candle which he
brought with him, walked straight to the bed and committed the murder.
Then he had waited till the rain ceased before carrying the body
downstairs to the pit. But what about the second person--the person who
had carried the wax candle and dropped spots of grease underneath the
broken gas globe? Had he come in at a different time, and why? Why had
he sought to light the gas, when he carried a candle? Why had he--as I
subsequently ascertained--left the room and gone downstairs to turn on
the gas at the meter?

"Eliminating Penreath for the time being, I tried next to fit in the
clues I had discovered with two alternative theories. Had the murder
been committed from outside by a villager, or by somebody in the inn?
There were possibilities about the former theory which I pointed out to
Superintendent Galloway, who subsequently investigated them, and
declared that there was no ground for the theory that the murder had
been committed from outside. The theory that the murder had been
committed by somebody inside the inn turned my attention to the inmates
of the inn. Excluding Penreath for the time being, there were five
inmates inside the walls the night the murder was committed--the
innkeeper, his daughter, his mother, the waiter, and Ann, the servant.
The girl could hardly have committed the murder, and could certainly not
have carried away the body. The old mad woman might have committed the
murder if she could have got out of her room, but she could not have
carried the body to the pit--neither could the servant. By this process
of elimination there remained the landlord and the deaf waiter.

"For a reason which it is not necessary to explain now, my thoughts
turned to the waiter when I first saw the body of the murdered man. The
possibility that he was the murderer was strengthened by the slight clue
of the line in the clay which I found underneath the murdered man's
bedroom window. That window is about five feet from the ground outside,
and the waiter, who is short and stout, could not have climbed through
the window without something to stand on. But the waiter could not
possibly have carried the body to the pit. His right arm is malformed,
and only a very strong man, with two strong arms, could have performed
that feat.

"There remained the innkeeper. He was the only person on the inn
premises that night, except Penreath, who could have carried the corpse
downstairs and thrown it int